Baseball will always have its staunch traditionalists ... their usual grouchy reasons for resisting change ...... knee-jerk resistance to change seems to have softened a little ...The proposals coming from Manfred’s office range from the confusing (a batter being walked intentionally goes straight to first base instead of waiting for four pitches outside the strike zone) to the reasonable (a cap on the number of trips a manager or coach can make to the mound) to the laughable (limits on the use of relief pitchers). But other than a couple of radical suggestions, like starting extra innings with a runner on second base, Manfred is really only putting forward incremental changes. The one controversial rule that will go into effect in the major leagues this year, making the intentional walk immediate, would probably shave only 15 seconds or so off every third game.
________________________

Radical? I wish. The Times writer refers to "a cap on the number of trips a manager or coach can make to the mound" as reasonable. The writer never considers the obvious: ban trips. If you suggest banning trips to a baseball fan, the likely reaction would be to ignore the suggestion and launch into a detailed explanation about how the trips should be regulated.

Baseball fans are so stuck in the mud of their thinking that they do not realize just how absurd they seem. Cap the number of mound trips! That's what this guy thinks is reasonable.

The problem isn't baseball, which is unimportant. It's that this type of compartmentalized thinking is also happening in areas that are important, like medical, legal, safety, etc. How about capping the number of times a bridge may fall down before something is done about it.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

This will be like an all pro football team: the best players at each fielding position, which also means no DH, which would be silly since only the Yankees had any full time DH. It also means that you do not move the right tackle to left tackle to accommodate a second string right tackle who is better than the first string left tackle. In other words, Babe Ruth stays in right field.

Criteria:
- played at least half the time for New York teams:
New York Giants through 1957
Brooklyn Dodgers through 1957
New York Yankees
New York Mets
- played at least half of that time at the fielding position

This criteria eliminates Willie Mays and precludes moving Mickey Mantle to shortstop, or worse, Lou Gehrig to DH. Stuff like that. This will be straight up best at position.

As a practical matter, I did not seriously consider players before 1903.

Campanella's career was a bit short and not because of his crippling car accident. He was pretty much finished in 1957, before the accident. Piazza played mostly for the Mets but had his best seasons with the Dodgers.

Dickey and Berra are pretty much a tossup. Berra played about 2.5 seasons as the starting LF but still had plenty of playing time as catcher.

1B: Lou Gehrig is a no brainer; OPS+ 179 in 9,663 PA; 112.4 WAR

2B: Did I pick the wrong Robinson? Jackie played only 56% (6,393) of his 11,330 innings at second base, mostly 1948-1952.
Cano: OPS + 126 in 5,791 PA; 45.2 WAR with the Yankees; tournament OPS only .686 in 217 PA
Jackie: OPS+ 132 in 5,802 PA; 61.5 WAR but only about 40.7 WAR at 2B; WS OPS only .679 in 160 PA

That makes their hitting about even. But since Jackie barely qualifies as a second baseman using my pretty easy criteria, I gave the decision to Cano.

Tony Lazzeri, Yankees: Only 144 of his 7,315 PA (Dodgers & Giants 51 each) were for a non New York team (Cubs), so we can use his career stats: OPS+ 121, 49.9 WAR. WS OPS .762

The American League East is going to be tough this year. The Yankees are projected to win 81 games and yet still finish last, is how tough. That same win total, for example, would place a team in a tie for second in the AL Central’s projected standings.There are reasons to be more bullish on the Yankees than the projections suggest. Plenty of smart people around the team are. The young core, consisting of Gary Sanchez, Greg Bird, Didi Gregorius, Aaron Judge, and Clint Frazier, provides a fair amount of upside. If the bullpen proves to offer as much depth as it is does excellence at the top, you’d have two-thirds of a really good team.
____________________

Time out. On what planet is this guy? Didi is injured. Judge is still battling the other Aaron (Hill) to start in right field. Frazier will again try to hit AAA pitching.Ellsbury (Yanks ranked 22 in CF), Headley, Castro are mediocre at best.CC is the number two or three starter.Bird better be the word.Am I seeing the glass as half empty?Yes, because it is half empty, as in half of 8 starters are below average. Gardner in LF is OK, along with Gregorius. Sanchez and Bird may be young stars but they are only two and yet to really establish themselves for more than two months in a Yankee season. That's 4 of 8.

My view of Green and Cessa has been that they could be like Mantle and Maris: the only teammates with 50 homers in the same season. Unfortunately, Green and Cessa are unproven starting pitchers, not OF sluggers extraordinaire.

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Both Seattle and Colorado are in the West division in their respective conferences. Swapping them would be a step in the right direction of geographic realignment.
______________________

Part of the geographic problem is that the new teams created in 1961 through 1997 are in smaller markets spread out across the 48 contiguous states. This spread started in 1953 when the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee, then Atlanta in 1966. The As moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City in 1955, then later to Oakland in 1968. The Dodgers and Giants moved to California in 1958.

But it was expansion that really diluted things. The table below supports that. This post is not intended to be a detailed analysis of market sizes or wealth. New York is number one in both, with Chicago and Los Angeles probably the next two. Since the Colt 45s (Astros) joined the old National League with the Mets in 1962, the Houston metropolitan area has grown a lot. So has Phoenix. Expansion teams start with little talent yet some have been successful pretty quickly.

The Mets won the World Series in 1969. The Angels were 86-76 in third place in 1962, their second year. The Marlins started in 1993 and won the WS in 1997 and 2003. Blah, blah, blah. So simply comparing winning percentages may have some bias against the expansion teams but it's probably not as great as one might suppose.

Not surprisingly, the Yankees won the highest percentage of their games, the most WS and pennants and have by far the best rate of WS and pennants won since 1961: WS about every 6 years, pennants about every 3.7 years.

Of the 30 teams, 13 won more regular season games than they lost. The table below is sorted on percent of games won. Of the 13 winning teams, only number 13, the Angels, is an expansion team.

Cruise through the table and you'll see a clear pattern. While the teams in existence in 1960 are saddled with the Chicago teams, which have each won only one WS since 1961, most have been uniformly successful. Those teams are in bold.

The solution obviously is a Super League of about 8, maybe 10, teams, first proposed eight years ago.

Super League Sunday, March 29, 2009I really don't care whether Kansas City has a MLB team. Nor Toronto. Nor Pittsburgh. I'm tired of junk like small market teams and revenue sharing. There's a reason it's called MAJOR league. It does not mean that Kansas City cannot have a baseball team. It means that Kansas City is not entitled to a MAJOR league team, subsidized by fans of the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Dodgers, etc.Why don't those teams drop out of MLB and form a super league of their own? They could form their own television network and/or cut deals with existing networks. Ten teams would do it.
________________________

Monday, March 27, 2017

I heard a San Diego announcer suggest this during an exhibition game today against Seattle on MLB Network. It made a lot of sense.

Both Seattle and Colorado are in the West division in their respective conferences. Swapping them would be a step in the right direction of geographic realignment. But even as an interim step, it is compelling.

There is precedent. Houston and Milwaukee swapped conferences but in different years. First Milwaukee switched from the American to the National conference Central, joining Houston. Then years later Houston switched to the American conference West, joining the Texas Rangers who play in Dallas.

Obviously it makes much more sense to put all six California teams into one division along with Seattle and Arizona. The entire 30 team league could be realigned with two seven team divisions, and two eight team divisions. You can make up the others for yourself but the easiest to imagine is the aforementioned eight team California plus two division.

But for now, we can only hope that commissioner Manfred the A-Rod Slayer can muster enough imagination to swap Seattle for Colorado.

Of course. How stupid is it to remove protective equipment when you come into warm's way in the batter's box? Even if the catcher's mask would be a problem when batting, the shin guards and chest protector would obviously protect the batter.

I have long advocated that all fielders not in the outfield should wear the functional equivalent of the catcher's gear. Given that, I think the catcher should use the equipment that he's already wearing. It's dumb to remove it. Then put it back on. Then remove it. Then put it back on... for four plate appearances. Come on. Get smart.

Plesac was a relief pitcher from 1986 to 2003, appearing in 1,064 games, although as a lefty specialist he threw only 1,072 innings. But he has plenty of experience watching games.

Holliday is a 37 year old righty batter with 7,489 plate appearances. At the start of the two minute, 34 second interview Holliday said, very matter of factly, something that astonished me but did not impact Plesac at all and the interview continued.

Plesac: Walk me through where you like to stand in the box ...Holliday: ... some of the boxes are marked differently ... some boxes where you feel like the box is a little closer ...

Say what? You've got to be kidding me? Am I the only one who did not know this? And it's unclear if this varies consistently from park to park or whether it might even vary within a single park. Maybe it's just a simple mistake by the ground crew or maybe it's an attempt by a team to gain a competitive advantage. You know, cheat.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman has the team ranked 22 in center field. That's 22 out of 30 teams. The Yankees had a string of Hall of Fame center fielders: Earle Combs, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle. During the Jeter era, they had Bernie Williams. And Melky Cabrera on the last championship team in 2009.

Though he’s currently projected to get the most playing time there, Curtis Granderson isn’t an optimal center fielder. He’s probably going to be more than serviceable on offense, as someone who gets on base and dumps baseballs into people’s beers in the right field seats. At 36, though, Granderson’s best days in the field are behind him. He’s much better suited to playing a corner, but with Yoenis Cespedes and Jay Bruce being there, and Michael Conforto theoretically getting some time as well, he’s sequestered away in center. He shouldn’t kill the Mets there, and given the offensive production that they’re probably going out of this outfield, that’ll do just fine.

22. Yankees

When the Yankees were mostly mocked for giving Jacoby Ellsbury $153 million a few years back, I mostly defended the deal as a modest overpay of a better player than people were giving them credit for acquiring. That looked like a decent opinion for exactly one year, since Ellsbury was pretty good in 2014, but things have fallen apart the last two years, and now the Yankees are paying a lot of money to rank behind a team that plucked Leonys Martin off the scrap heap.With Ellsbury and Hicks, the team’s defense in center field is okay, but there’s not a lot of bat here, and this contract has four years to go. At this point, it’s probably unlikely that Ellsbury makes it through all four years in New York; unless he figures out how to hit for some power again, it seems likely he’ll be playing his way out of the Bronx before they are done paying him.
__________________________

Cashman deserves credit for getting Granderson but not for essentially replacing him in the outfield with Ellsbury for the 2014 season:

Curtis Granderson played four seasons for the Yankees: 2010-2013. Granderson joined Giambi as the only Yankee since Mickey Mantle to hit at least 40 homers in consecutive seasons. Granderson is now a free agent.

As a replacement for Granderson the Yankees are considering Carlos Beltran, a free agent who played most recently for the St. Louis Cardinals. I love Beltran and wanted the Yankees to sign him when he was a free agent the first time following the 2004 season. Beltran would have been the perfect replacement for Bernie Williams. The Yankees showed no interest then. Beltran instead joined the Mets and set the team record for home runs in his second season: 41. In his seventh season with the Mets they sent Beltran to San Francisco. Then on to St. Louis in 2012. Beltran will be 37 in 2014 and the Yanks want him because he might be willing to accept a short term deal.

How did we come to this? Copy cat management...

As a fan I'd like at least some core players to play most if not all of their careers with the team I root for. Having supplemental players is part of the deal but I'd like at least some of them to remain for at least 4-5 years. Despite their flaws I had gotten comfortable with Swisher and Granderson. I understand that the team needs fresh blood but I'm very concerned that all teams are entering a period when fan interest in individuals will receive very little consideration.

I wish that Carlos Beltran had been a Yankee the last decade but I don't really want him now that he is old and injury prone, not as a rent-a-player. I want to like the players on my team...

Despite what the Steinbrenner Kids may think we're not rooting for the laundry. And not for a cameo appearance. I don't want to see just anybody in a Yankee uniform, which is one reason I oppose the pending acquisition of Brian McCann.
________________________

The one position the Yankees did not need to fill was center field. However, incumbent Brett Gardner is being replaced with Jacoby Ellsbury. Both are good fielders, good base stealers and neither hits home runs, except for the 32 (15 home, 17 road) Ellsbury inexplicably hit in 2011, his only season in double figures.Ellsbury: Born: September 11, 1983 OPS+ 108; 241 SB, 46 CS; OPS+ 2013 114Gardner: Born: August 24, 1983 OPS+ 97; 161 SB, 38 CS; OPS+ 2013 108Ellsbury is an upgrade but hardly one worth $153 million over seven years...With so many holes to fill, why fill a non-hole? ...In right field the Yankees obviously could have brought back Curtis Granderson who signed with the Mets for $15 million for each of four years. Instead they signed Carlos Beltran for the same annual pay for three years.Granderson born: March 16, 1981 OPS+ 117Beltran born: April 24, 1977 OPS+ 122Beltran will be 39 in his final Yankee season. Granderson will be 37 in his final Met season.Friday, December 6, 2013 Curtis Granderson: home run rate Detroit v. New York.
_________________________Granderson, Beltran and continuity v. winning. Monday, December 9, 2013

Granderson played the last four seasons with the Yankees. Had the Yankees given him the same deal that he signed with the Mets, Granderson would play eight seasons with the Yankees. That's significant for a player who is not a star but a significant contributor and all around good guy...The Yankees really did not need Ellsbury to play center field because they already had Brett Gardner...

Did Yankee ownership and management consider continuity? To me it makes about as much baseball sense for the team to have Granderson and Beltran for a total of seven seasons, than to have Ellsbury for seven seasons at significantly higher pay plus Beltran for another three seasons.Ellsbury will achieve substantial status if he makes significant contributions and the team wins. Beltran cannot because he is joining the team when he is too old to be much more than a rent-a-player. It's an unfortunate way to describe such a good player but Beltran has put himself into that category by playing for too many teams...Ellsbury is not really a home run hitter. He has double figures only once: 32 in 2011. But both Granderson and Beltran have hit 40 homers playing center field in New York. Duke Snider did that five consecutive seasons playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Willie Mays did it twice: 41, 51.Among Yankee center fielders:Joe DiMaggio: 46Mickey Mantle: 52, 42, 40, 54Curtis Granderson: 41, 43.
Yankee players have hit 40 homers 30 times. The only other Yankees to hit 40 homers multiple times:Babe Ruth: 11Lou Gehrig: 5
Mickey Mantle: 4Jason Giambi: 2Alex Rodriguez: 2
Curtis Granderson: 2

The only Yankees to hit 40 homers in consecutive seasons:RuthGehrigMantleGiambiGranderson.Granderson is in some pretty elite company but he's leaving after only four seasons. Don't his achievements count for something other than a projection of his wins above replacement (WAR)? ...Carlos Beltran is tied for the Met record. Maybe Granderson will challenge that. Has anyone even considered that? The Yankees now have the Met home run king and the Mets have a Yankee who both equaled and exceeded the Met record.Winning is the thing. But when the mix of players is so arbitrary when do we value flesh and blood over laundry? Is the current model of success used by Boston in 2013 with short term additions the immediate future? If so, after a couple of years of that, how much will we care about the players and our team?
_________________________

Triangle offense: Yankees copying Knicks? Monday, December 1, 2014What's the plan, Cashman? Maybe Yankees general manager Brian Cashman is taking a page from the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA): the triangle offense...... the Knicks seem to have inspired the Yankees, if for no other reason the Knicks seem to have a plan. A year ago the Yankees had a plan: get under the soft salary cap and free up about $100 million for use in acquiring future free agents. However, the Yankees lacked discipline and focus and instead wasted lots of money on Jacoby Ellsbury (CF, 31), Brian McCann (C, 31) and Carlos Beltran (RF, 37). After spending on them the Yankees were on the salary cap bubble but smashed through the cap by signing pitcher Masahiro Tanaka...The Yankees now seem content with emulating the Knicks and trying to ensure that the team qualifies for the Major Baseball League (MBL) tournament, which is now also pretty easy with the addition of a second wild card in each conference...So with that background why not suspect that the Yankees intend to implement a comparably bizarre baseball version of the triangle offense? Maybe that's why the Yankees have gaping holes at second, third and short: to fill with the triangle offense. Or maybe the Bermuda triangle. Those same holes existed a year ago when the Yankees signed the aforementioned players for center, catcher and right. Maybe they expected to fill the vacant infield spots by osmosis...Then the question could change from what's the plan to who's on first?
__________________